And now the BBC hourly weather reports suggest that tomorrow will be completely sunny where I am, with some cloud later in the afternoon. But their 5-daily report suggests that tomorrow will have heavy snow.

FFS: they can’t even agree with themselves!

They should employ a little old man to look up at the sky, shrug his shoulders and say “it looks like rain” rather than spend millions on maths and computers, which end up doing the same thing. I hope, Mr Morgan, that you now understand my complaint. Weather is de-facto chaotic, and it is quixotic and hubristic to think that more of Mr Intel’s chips’ll finally knock it into line. I agree with Randi – they’re a bunch of money-wasting charlatans.

http://www.weather.com/weather/alerts/localalerts/USIL0228?phenomena=WS&significance=A&areaid=ILZ014&office=KLOT&etn=0001

(hmm, wonder how long that link will stay like that)

Maybe I’m just lucky, but local weather forecasts are rather good here, the accuracy of next day forecasts on the site linked below is over 80%. Of course the covered area is small, it’s more or less 5000 square km.
http://www.meteotrentino.it/bollettini/today/generale_it.aspx?ID=7

It isn’t fair to say weathermen are like homeopaths and psychics: they don’t say “this is what will happen”, but rather “this is what might happen, assuming nothing will interfere with the system and change the parameters”.

If you’re bothered, honest meteorological information is out there in a few clicks, and it’s easily comprehensible. It tells you things like (they think) there is a 70% chance it will rain from 10am-2pm. So long as that’s right 6 or 7 times out of 10 – and it seems to be in my experience – then it’s working.

Complaining that such a prediction is sometimes wrong is just silly.

When you watch weather forecasts, you have to translate it back into these sort of statements. Most of the population can grasp this. What they hear is “sounds like it might rain tomorrow” – which, beatifully, coincides with the best the weather guys can offer – and quite possibly the best that’s actually possible ever. They’re not peddling certainty.

As NM says, it’s “little more accurate than context-weighted chance”. Of course! No one is *really* saying otherwise. Still, such a thing can be of limited use in making decisions.

The bit that’s really beneath you is where you express surprise that they can’t predict which hour it’ll snow but profess to say something about next week. It’s *easier*. It’s easier to say roughly what it’ll be like next August than to ascertain the precise moment at which a balloon will burst. They said it would snow on you, and it has. You don’t like that they got the time and the quantity wrong?

In short: I don’t like the bit where you compared weather forecasters to homeopaths and charlatans. It’s as if you don’t understand the problem with those people.

This would provide a useful context for the viewer, demonstrating the accuracy they can expect. And I believe it would humble, if not humiliate, the forecaster before he opened his mouth. Perhaps a little less hubris and a little more honesty would make their silly guessing a lot more palatable.